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Enhancing the Motivational Affordance of Human–Computer Interfaces in a Cross-Cultural Setting

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Information Technology and Innovation Trends in Organizations

Abstract

Increasing globalization has created tremendous opportunities and challenges for organizations and society. Organizations attempt to draw on people’s varied experience, skills, and creativity, regardless of their location; consequently, a broad range of information technologies to better support the collaboration of diverse, and increasingly distributed, sets of participants are ever more utilized. However, research on cross-cultural computer-mediated collaboration has thus far remained sparse. To this end, this research-in-progress paper reports on a study that will examine the effectiveness of modifications of a group collaboration environment’s human–computer interface on group performance, taking into consideration the effects of national culture of the group members. We will test different levels of feedback as a mechanism to increase performance in a controlled laboratory experiment with participants from the USA and East Asia, so as to examine their differential effects across cultures differing widely on the individualism/collectivism dimension. Finally, we will discuss the implications of the findings for the design of the human–computer interface for cross-cultural computer-mediated idea generation and computer-mediated collaboration in general.

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Acknowledgement

The work described in this paper was substantially supported by a research grant from City University of Hong Kong (Project No.7008019).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    C. Schneider

  2. Department of Management Information Systems, Eller College of Management, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    J. Valacich

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  1. C. Schneider
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  2. J. Valacich
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. Schneider .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sistemi Informativi (CeRSI), Centro di Ricerca sui, Via G. Alberoni 7, Roma, 00198, Italy

    Alessandro D'Atri

  2. Department of Management, Parthenope University Naples, Via Medina 40, Naples, 80133, Italy

    Maria Ferrara

  3. , College of Business, Florida State University, Academic Way 821, Tallahassee, 32306-1110, USA

    Joey F. George

  4. , CeRSI, LUISS Guido Carli, via Alberoni 7, Roma, 00198, Italy

    Paolo Spagnoletti

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Schneider, C., Valacich, J. (2011). Enhancing the Motivational Affordance of Human–Computer Interfaces in a Cross-Cultural Setting. In: D'Atri, A., Ferrara, M., George, J., Spagnoletti, P. (eds) Information Technology and Innovation Trends in Organizations. Physica-Verlag HD. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2632-6_31

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